Origins
When ICL was formed in 1968 as a result of the merger of International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) with English Electric Leo Marconi, the company considered a number of options for its future product line. These included enhancements to either ICT's 1900 Series or the English Electric System 4, and a development based on J. K. Illiffe's Basic Language Machine. The option finally selected was the so called Synthetic Option: a new design starting with a clean sheet of paper.
As the name implies, the design was influenced from many sources. These included ICL's own earlier machines. The design of Burroughs mainframes was influential, although ICL rejected the concept of optimising the design for one high-level language. The MULTICS system provided other ideas, notably in the area of protection. However, the biggest single outside influence was probably the MU5 machine developed at Manchester University.
Read more about this topic: ICL 2900 Series
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)